Stop
me if you've heard this one. A
priest, an altar boy, two Crusaders, and a con artist walk toward an abbey with
a suspected witch in tow.

Season
of the Witch is supposed to be funny, right? With a set up like that, multiple scenarios lifted straight out of Monty
Python (and a few that the troupe would have wished they came up with), and a
seemingly constant stream of one-liners that undermine whatever more dramatic
sense of dark adventure the movie dabbles in ("There is no hope here, only
the Plague," "We're going to need more holy water," and a pause
of such length after the first word of a request that would have made Pinter
uncomfortable), there is no way any person of rational intelligence could read
Bragi F. Schut's screenplay without recognizing that here is a comedy.

Yet
director Dominic Sena or some tampering studio executive have decided that we
need a more highbrow approach to a story where two deserting knights from the
Crusades come across a town encircled by a massive murder of crows and don't
think twice that something might be wrong down there. If only they had common sense, the whole affair could have been avoided.

But
no, Behman of Blybrook (Nicolas Cage, speaking with an accent that involves
speeding up consonant sounds and sporting a mighty finely styled goatee for a
man who's spent over a decade killing the enemies of the Church)—I kid you not
about the name—and his trusty partner Felson (Ron Perlman, whose character's
backstory is given as a joke), who have left the Crusades after one slaughter
too many in an eleven-year montage of slow-motion sword-swinging, just have to
go down to that town. There they
discover the Black Plague has overtaken the populace and that a young girl
(Claire Foy, sporting a sinister smirk at almost every turn that gives away the
ambiguity game), believed to be a Black Witch, is blamed for the whole
situation.

Take
her to abbey that lies across the scenic chasm with the rickety, old rope bridge
and through the pleasantly named Forest of Wormwood, says the town's cardinal
(Christopher Lee, sporting a mighty bulbous pus-filled globe above his right eye
and then dying). They do, bringing
Hagamar the Swindler (Stephen Graham, and please stop laughing about the
character name), Eckhart the Other Knight (Ulrich Thomsen, and see they aren't
all bad), Kay the Altar Boy (Robert Sheehan), the Debelzaq the Priest (Stephen
Campbell Moore, and yes, that one is pretty damn silly) with them.

It
is an adventure in episodes: Wherein the altar boy proves his worth as an agile
warrior, wherein the witch influences one character to blindly run into the
sword of another of the party who has dumbly held it at chest level, wherein the
survivors must battle evil wolves (You can tell because their faces shift to a
hairless scowl, and they turn entirely digital) in the foggy Forest of Wormwood,
and wherein the situational irony of the plot is that the girl is not one
wrongly placed, mystical projection of evil but another.

The
climax involves a copy of the Book of Solomon, which can stop one form of evil
but which could be great power in the hands of another type (and, no, don't
argue with the absent logic of that conceit), possessed monks and flying
imp-like things, and a fight with a flying demon that most closely resembles a
backyard wrestling match. They have
swords, and the demon can create fire. Why,
then, do they run around grappling and pushing each other?

Before
that, though, is much ridiculousness. There
are a few moments in which bodies are not dead yet, leading to
reach-out-and-grab-you moments (They start early during the useless prologue
featuring the trial of a trio of witches—one who is not yet dead projectile
vomits while the other gets revenge). Characters'
attitude toward the witch-but-not-really girl change on a lark. The sets and locations are dim, dank, and drab, continuing the sense that
people heard Dark Ages and curses and witches without really reading the script.

I
nearly forgot to mention the appearance of a group of self-flagellating men in Season
of the Witch.
If you must add to
the unintentional comedy of this scene, imagine them chanting in Latin. I don't think you'll have to, though.